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It is possible to be slightly cynical about this Facebook story. They're arguing that there are greater benefits to advertising on Facebook than simply the number of click throughs, or purchases that come from such clicks. Therefore, let us now go and measure the effectiveness of this advertising on Facebook by another method.

Facebook Inc, stung by doubts that advertising on the social network delivers enough bang for the buck, is preparing to unveil data to counter its critics and show that "clicks," the current metric of choice, tell only half the story.

OK, so what actually is that other half of the story?

Clicks became a metric of choice in part because they had become directly tied to Google Inc's performance. The world's No. 1 Web search engine offers an effective and easy-to-measure form of advertising because it lets marketers reach consumers at the moment they are searching for a particular product.

If a consumer clicks on the search ad, the job is done.

But Facebook argues that for brand advertisers, fine-tuning the number of times a particular consumer sees an ad as well as ensuring that the ad has reached all of its target audience are far more effective techniques.

That all seems entirely believable: for no one at all thinks that big brands like Coca Cola are spending all that money in order to get you to buy a Coke right now, every time you see one of the ads. They want you to have the brand in mind as, if and when you're feeling a bit thirsty.

Facebook's new tools and information are thus an attempt to appeal to those brand marketeers, rather than those advertising a specific product for immediate purchase. This does make a certain amount of sense. For it has long been noted that Facebook ads really just aren't as effective in generating sales as those on, say, Google. One reason put forward for this is that on Facebook the ads are being shown to people as they socialise. On Google they're being shown to people as they search for something, quite possibly search for something they wish to purchase right now. It wouldn't be a huge surprise that ads shown at that second point are more effective at producing an immediate sale than those shown in that first manner. On this point it would be very interesting indeed to see if there's any major difference between the performance of Google's search engine advertising and that on Google +. Does the latter suffer from the same problem of being too far from the decision point of whether to purchase or not?

Further, perhaps it could be true that ads shown to people as they socialise will be more effective at brand building.

However, that's only one way of looking at the story. Another being the rather cynical way in which I started here. It's not uncommon when a specific method of measurement shows poor performance for the argument to be made that the method of measurement should be changed. The Soviet Union didn't have free speech or any form of political freedom so let us measure it by their lack of unemployment. Modern teaching might not teach kids to read very well but my, aren't they full of self-esteem these days? Facebook advertising might not bring you many sales but just look at the brand awareness you're building!

Fortunately we don't have to decide right now which is the correct explanation. For there is one more step:

Through its partnership with Datalogix, Facebook says it can now give brand marketers data on the actual in-store sales that their ad campaigns on Facebook have generated - a more useful piece of feedback than total clicks. Datalogix tracks the relationship between ads on Facebook and real-world spending by compiling consumer purchasing information from retail stores and matching it with data about Facebook ad impressions.

Presumably in 6 months time we'll either see a crowing about how effective Facebook advertising really is. Or perhaps the introduction of a new measurement method.